TalkyTalky

10 months ago

The Nature of TiddlyWiki

"It's tiddlers all the way down!"

Hosted by InnoQ in Düsseldorf, 27th June 2014

Jeremy Ruston

@Jermolene

http://tiddlywiki.com/talkytalky

History

History

TiddlyWiki was first released 10 years ago (before jQuery!).

TiddlyWiki5 began in 2011, and is currently in beta: https://github.com/Jermolene/TiddlyWiki5

Introduction

What is TiddlyWiki?

TiddlyWiki is a JavaScript wiki that can run entirely in the browser, or under Node.js.

Features

Features

  • Works on pretty much any HTML5 browser
  • Built-in encryption
  • Multi-language support for the user interface and your content
  • Themes
  • Colour palettes
  • Plugins for popular JS libraries:
    • CodeMirror
    • D3.js
    • Highlight.js
    • MarkDown

Saving

How TiddlyWiki Saves Changes

The awkward but HTML5-compliant way:

var link = document.createElement("a");
link.setAttribute("target","_blank");
link.setAttribute("href","data:text/html," + encodeURIComponent(text));
link.setAttribute("download",filename);
document.body.appendChild(link);
link.click();
document.body.removeChild(link);

Full code on GitHub

TiddlyFox

Saving with TiddlyFox

Allows changes to be saved directly to the file system in Firefox (including Firefox for Android).

TiddlyDesktop

Saving with TiddlyDesktop

TiddlyDesktop is a custom browser with extensions to support working with TiddlyWiki. Based on node-webkit.

TWEdit

Saving on iPad/iPhone

Download TWEdit

SingleFileDemo

Demo of Single File Edition

You're already in a demo of TiddlyWiki, but here's a quick run through of using it:

  1. Visit http://tiddlywiki.com/empty.html in Chrome
  2. Add and edit some tiddlers
  3. Explore tags, search, sidebars
  4. Drag an image from the file system
  5. Copy and paste part of an HTML page
  6. Save using Chrome
  7. Inspect source
  8. Reload in Firefox, use TiddlyFox
  9. Enable encryption, resave, check source

TaskManagementDemo

Task Management Demo

<$list filter="[!has[draft.of]tag[task]!tag[done]sort[created]]">

<$checkbox tag="done"> <$link to={{!!title}}><$view field="title"/></$link></$checkbox>

</$list>

See http://tiddlywiki.com/#TaskManagementExample

Customisation

Customisation via System Tags

Demo of customising TiddlyWiki:

  1. Create a tiddler called MyMenu
  2. Tag it $:/tags/SideBar and give it the text of some menu items
  3. Add a caption field
  4. Add a list-before field
  5. Same for adding a tab to $:/ControlPanel

See http://tiddlywiki.com/#SystemTags

Serverlessness

Serverlessness FTW!

Individual freedom on the Internet is threatened by the behaviour of corporations and the Governments that subvert them.

Why that matters - all the single file decentralisation stuff

  • Browsers are more powerful than servers. My mentor had a story about radio transmitters; turns out to be true of the web: the transmitters are simpler than the receivers.

How can we make an independent web? It's fundamentally asymmetrical; only brave homesteaders run their own servers, most people are happy to rent space from a central service. The jump to running your own server is huge: it's a new cost for most people, and the benefit is intangible. It's one of those situations where the penalties for screwing up can be disproportionate: eg, failing to keep backups or to keep security software up to date.

Browser-based web apps are cool, but the locus of control is wrong. The site decides when to update the app; the site decides whether or not the app is available at any particular time. The user can't save a webapp so that they can check it later, or take a snapshot of their data so that they can roll back to it if they don't like a later update.

TiddlersWikification

Duality of TiddlyWiki

Tiddly === Everything is a tiddler

A tiddler is defined as the smallest semantic unit of information.

It is a structure optimised for reuse through aggregation and composition.

Wiki === Everything is wikification

Wikification is the process of converting WikiText into HTML.

It makes linking (and other hypertext operations) become part of the punctuation of writing.

EverythingIsATiddler

Everything is a Tiddler

It's tiddlers, all the way down. The tiddler model is used for:

The boot kernel brings up enough of the infrastructure to load plugins. The core code itself is a plugin.

TiddlyWiki is just an engine: one of the applications you can write with it is the TW UI, but also easy to build completely different UIs.

RenderingPipeline

TiddlyWiki Rendering Pipeline

Like Angular and Ractive. Not string based; always uses a DOM and selective updating.

UserInterfaceState

User Interface State

Show how sidebar state is held in $:/state/sidebar:

$tw.wiki.addTiddler(new $tw.Tiddler({title: "$:/state/sidebar",text: "yes"}))

Basic primitives for user interfaces:

  • <$transclude> widget to transclude another tiddler
  • <$reveal> widget to selectively show or hide content according to a state tiddler
  • <$button> widget set or toggle a state tiddler
  • <$list> widget to repeat a template for each of several tiddlers

Node.js

Running TiddlyWiki Under Node.js

Creating a single file wiki

tiddlywiki mywiki --init tw5.com
tiddlywiki mywiki --rendertiddler $:/core/save/all index.html text/plain

See the template for the HTML, and for some of the CSS.

Serving a wiki over HTTP

tiddlywiki my2wiki --init server
tiddlywiki my2wiki --server

TiddlyWiki5 provides a TiddlyWeb-compatible API

Other options

PouchDB - from Jon Udell's Thali project - https://gist.github.com/judell/9744381

StaticSiteGeneration

Missing tiddler "StaticSiteGeneration" - click to create

ServerSync

TiddlyWiki Server Synchronisation

The same syncer module is used in the browser and the server.

Using TiddlyWiki as a Library

Using TiddlyWiki as a Library

/*

A sample node.js application that uses TiddlyWiki5 as a library

*/

var $tw = {};

require("../TiddlyWiki5/boot/bootprefix.js").bootprefix($tw)

// Dummy command line arguments telling TW5 not to load a wiki from the filesystem
$tw.boot = $tw.boot || {};
$tw.boot.argv = ["*"];

require("../TiddlyWiki5/boot/boot.js").TiddlyWiki($tw);

// Boot TiddlyWiki
$tw.boot.boot();

// Add some tiddlers
$tw.wiki.addTiddler({
		title: "TiddlerOne",
		text: "Text of tiddler one, incorporating the {{TiddlerTwo}}",
		tags: ["alpha", "beta"]
});
$tw.wiki.addTiddler({
		title: "TiddlerTwo",
		text: "Text of tiddler two"
});

// Render a tiddler as HTML
var html = $tw.wiki.renderTiddler("text/html","TiddlerOne");
console.log(html);

See: https://github.com/Jermolene/TiddlyWiki5DemoApp

Reflections

10 years of TiddlyWiki

I've learned:

  • JS was wildly misunderstood. It's still widely misunderstood
  • Browsers were broken; now they're pretty consistent (except certain areas like drag and drop)
  • My privilege is to be in a position to engage with my users to understand their needs. I should be paying people in the community for what I learn about making TiddlyWiki better
  • Open source is the natural state of human software production
    • It recognises that software is not a branch of engineering
    • It teaches us how to make collaboration be a by-product of performing the work. It allows us to present the largest possible surface area for prospective collaborators.
  • Being a software designer isn't enough. We need to design business models that are healthy for us, and in the best interests of our users. Something as personal and fundamental as my intellectual apparatus shouldn't be under the control of someone else

Shoutouts

Shout-outs

Several other projects share goals with TiddlyWiki:

End


Thank You

http://tiddlywiki.com/

https://twitter.com/Jermolene

https://twitter.com/TiddlyWiki

https://github.com/Jermolene/TiddlyWiki5